October 16, 2001 WASHINGTON (AP) - The Environmental Protection Agency hopes to clear the lungs of millions of children exposed each year to secondhand smoke through a public relations campaign that encourages parents who smoke to light up outdoors.
The EPA has found that children who breathe secondhand smoke are more likely to suffer from bronchitis and pneumonia, wheezing and coughing spells, ear infections and more frequent and severe asthma attacks.
Secondhand smoke is a mixture of the smoke given off by the burning end of a cigarette, pipe, or cigar, and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers.
It has been classified by the EPA as a known cause of lung cancer in people, resulting in several thousand lung cancer deaths in non-smokers each year.
Joining the EPA in the $1.5 million campaign Tuesday are the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology, the Consumer Federation of America and the National Association of Counties.
The counties' organization, for example, agreed to help gather parent signatures to commit to smoking outside as part of the overall public relations health campaign.
The consumer group said a new survey indicates that 70 percent of parents who smoke and who claim to have been previously unaware of the harmful effects would take their tobacco outside to protect their children.
"We don't think the public is very aware of how many children are involuntary victims of secondhand smoke," Jack Gillis, the group's public affairs director, said Monday.
The National Cancer Institute has said there are links between secondhand smoke and sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, new cases of childhood asthma and behavioral and cognitive problems in children.
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
